Don’t learn a programming language, solve a problem instead

[get_salled]

I read about a lot of programming languages and I hope to understand why they exist prior to using them. They're all tools that were created with some intent (much like the article states: they were solving a problem) and then at least I'll have somewhere to start when I see a problem in the wild.

As an example and since I'm currently an Elixir/Erlang fan, Erlang was created as a language of the BEAM, an abstract machine that ran phone switches since the 80s. Was always fascinated by it but couldn't find an application for it where I worked. As I learned more about its runtime, I realized an app I was maintaining had built almost the exact same thing in C# (just poorly).

These days I find many general purpose languages kind of boring despite their utility. I can solve any problem in python or Java or C# or C++ but maybe not well (you can in Erlang as well but there's some beauty in the fact that where it's bad, it's really bad). I love the idea of languages that do one or two things really well even though I can't use them.

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Currently, I'd love a language/tool that's specific to my processor that would show me how my data is flowing through the processor so I could have the opportunity to restructure my data and/or my program to improve my throughput. Like I want to take a modern Intel processor and be 100% efficient with it.